NOTE: This has probably been asked already, but I am unable to find it. If such is the case, please post a link to that question in the comments. Here, I will try to explain how I think this problem should be combated.
A very useful feature that I think we need for Stack Overflow is automatic loading of new questions on pages such as the home page, unanswered, search results, or tags. This is so that when new questions/bumped questions appear, the user sees them without having to manually refresh. I find myself constantly refreshing SO and other Trilogy sites for new content, but what if we were to make this dynamic, or AJAX-y?
I can think of three ways to do this:
- Having the pages auto-refresh every few minutes - this is a possible way of solving the problem, but it doesn't seem like a good solution.
- New/bumped questions flow in at the top - with JQuery, we could have an interface where new content is automatically added to the top of the list (and maybe some questions change positions in the order). Old ones could either disappear or remain there, so that the list still contains the original content, but is longer (of course, periodically, the old ones can be purged, so that the list doesn't get huge after sitting open for a few hours, or something).
- A box that says, "X more questions since you started browsing, click here to see them" or "Y more questions since you started searching, click here to see them" - This is similar to the technique Twitter uses for its search results (if I'm not mistaken). After clicking on that "click here" button, the questions can flow into the list, as explained in possibility #2.
What do you think?
UPDATE: It seems that #3 is being supported the most. I really think we need this. Jeff! (:D)
